


Moonlit

by skb2n



Category: Disney Duck Universe, DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Alcohol, Horny Teenagers, M/M, POV Donald Duck, Pre-Canon, nsfw by ch.2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25546564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skb2n/pseuds/skb2n
Summary: Away from the noise of overbearing relatives and insufferable elites, Donald found solace in one of his favorite activities with his least favorite cousin.
Relationships: Donald Duck/Gladstone Gander
Comments: 38
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [ A friend/totally mysterious CC anon requested Gladstone and Donald as teens experimenting with each other, and I went off the deep end exploring their world when there's so little representation in the cartoon. Because this is during a time we never see in the DT17 universe, I had to take...a lot of creative liberties. Just roll with it. teen dngl *dabs* Enjoy!! ]

* * *

Tower bells at the center of town rang in time with the grandfather clocks scattered around McDuck Manor. The day had entered night, and while most others were preparing for sleep, the McDuck estate was busy celebrating the holiday season with a billionaire’s ball. Elites from all around the area had gathered to one-up each other under the guise of gift-giving, though Scrooge was always the odd one out. No one seemed to mind if the world’s richest duck played by his own rules—except Donald and his familial cohorts as they took refuge at the top of the banquet hall’s staircase. 

“I’m bored of this.”

He lifted his weary head in the direction of Gladstone’s voice, bypassing Della and Fethry standing next to him. The boy was holding a bowl of snacks snuck out from the kitchen pantry and tossing a few crumbs to the unsavory crowd of Calisota denizens below. Every now and then an unsuspecting adult would paw at their neck and look up only to find innocent young ducks waving their hands from the banister. 

“I don’t know how many more talks with stuffy rich people I can handle,” Donald lamented. “It’s like everything they ask turns into a competition to make you feel like dirt.”

“Tell me about it,” Della agreed and rested her head on the metal bar. 

“They’re all, ‘What’re you going to do after high school?’ ‘Are you going to move on from that rock phase and finally get into business?’ ‘Oh, your poor uncle Scrooge,’” he mocked with a shrill voice before retching and returning to normal. “Can’t stand it.”

His sister hummed. “Christmas is next week and this just makes me want to skip the whole season.”

“Yeah,” he began again after a moment of thought, “and you _know_ Uncle Scrooge only involves us so he can look like a family man in front of all those other megalomaniacs.”

“Showing face and showing off,” Gladstone singsonged.

“He’s been kind of obsessed with family lately, hasn’t he?” Fethry asked from the fringe of their group.

“More like the idea of family,” Donald scoffed. “To boost his image, I guess.”

“Whatever keeps the business afloat, it doesn’t bother me,” Gladstone rebuked as he flicked another crumb to great success.

Donald shot him a dirty look that went unnoticed. “It should.”

“At least the food is good,” Fethry added.

Gladstone turned to his cousin. “Is it, dear Feth? Is it?”

The boy sighed. “No. I couldn’t even stomach the hors-d'oeuvres.”

“We have got to find a way out of this,” Della piped up before walking over to Donald and nudging him, her face brighter than the room’s chandelier. “Duh! Let’s go to the garden house!”

The others gave their verbal approval and followed her. Donald froze in place as his blood ran cold. 

The garden house, as his sister called it, was an annex building to the rear of the mansion grounds just before the cliffs’ edge. Scrooge had always forbade the cousins from going in there, rattling off about its dangerous artifacts and curses, which of course was a rule they broke since day one. Della was too crafty in her curious adventures and Donald never had any luck convincing everyone to change their minds. Though what they quickly found once inside and upon closer exploration was anything but dangerous: the artifacts were nothing more than treasures too damaged to profit from yet too valuable to tamper with, like some sort of reject house for unwanted surplus and unfavorable guests. The others were disappointed. Donald found it a relief. 

The building itself was fully furnished with just enough accommodation for them to turn it into a safe haven from insufferable family obligations. And while they never experienced any haunts the likes of ghosts or possessed furniture, there was one spot in particular that none of them ever ventured into. On the second floor down an eerie hall was a room guarded by impervious locks and endless horror stories within the family about what would happen to whoever stepped inside. There had even been a rumor mill throughout Duckburg in their early youth that elevated it to mythos. Somehow it worked to keep them out.

Donald, however, knew the truth behind its door that he could never talk about. More than that, he had his own...personal reasons for avoiding it. He also couldn’t talk about those. 

“I’m sure the party’s almost over,” he said in a hurry, biting his tongue that he couldn’t come up with a more persuasive deterrence. 

“Donald, Uncle Scrooge is a Glaswegian,” Della stated like it was common knowledge, finishing the statement when Donald and the others gave no reaction. “He doesn’t know the concept of ending a party before midnight. It’s gonna be a while.” 

In a last-ditch effort he tugged on her arm and put on his saddest duckling face. Maybe she would have mercy on him if he looked pitiful enough.

“Can’t we just stay here?” he whined.

“C’mon, this is the perfect chance. No one will notice if we sneak out the back.”

She ushered him to the floor below, and he only followed after he noticed Fethry’s and Gladstone’s compliance. Turning down his peers was never his forte. 

Donald crept about the manor in a row behind the others, hugging the walls as closely as possible while they made their escape. Signs of the older folks’ intoxicated wiles did wonders as a distraction; people hardly bothered with them at all. Miraculously, or perhaps with a tinge of luck in their party, they slipped through one of the kitchen’s back doors without a single person stopping them. Four pairs of feet tamped winter earth and made pace for the annex building with moonlight as their guide. They still had to make sure no one saw, though getting out of the biting cold was also a great motivator for moving swiftly.

Once at the building’s exterior, Della pulled out a makeshift multi-tool from inside her shirt and fiddled with the lock on a side door.

“You were carrying that the whole time?” Fethry implored with curious eyes. “Where do you even keep it?”

Della pushed an air of derision through her teeth. “They never make girl shirts with pockets in them, so I do it myself.” 

Her hands were shaky, whether from the cold or the jitters Donald didn’t know, but true to Della fashion she unlocked the door in no time. It swung open as she indulged in a brief victory dance and pulled them all inside.

The place was just as untouched and inconspicuous as they left it. Air circulated a bit chillier than before but one turn of the central heating dial would fix that. On the first floor where they stood were all the essentials for them to enjoy, from a surprisingly stocked food pantry, to working bathrooms, to an open living room complete with an entertainment corner. All they needed was a plan.

“What now, Cuz?” 

Gladstone’s maturing timbre pulled Donald away from glancing about the room and squarely to him. Indecipherable eyes held his gaze and wrought momentary chaos on his nerves before he realized the boy had actually been addressing his sister.

He wasn’t sure if he would survive the night.

“We can play some games, then watch a movie, then play some more games,” the girl replied while making way for the TV-couch area across the room. 

“Works for me,” Gladstone accepted and sat on an adjacent sofa.

“Me three,” Fethry complied and joined next to Della.

Donald watched in groaning silence as his relatives cozied up in excitement. He was completely out of sync.

“Donny, get over here,” Gladstone urged with a pat on the seat next to him. He hated it.

But he hated how he willingly obeyed even more.

Gladstone did nothing but smirk and cross his legs once Donald sat down, his bent knee intruding on his personal space without care. Donald rolled his eyes and scooted to the other end waiting for someone else to say something.

“What’re we playing?” Fethry was the first to ask, leaning eagerly on his cushion and holding a bag of some organic snack Donald hadn’t seen him bring over.

“Well, I was thinking we start out of the box,” Della opened with. “How about Truth or dare?” Everyone voiced their distaste. “Fine, fine. We’ll do a short round of Never have I ever and then we can get to the good stuff.”

Fethry tilted his head. “What’s that?”

“I hate these games,” Donald grumbled into his shoulder. 

Gladstone seemed to have taken notice, rolling his head back and getting his obnoxiously long beak too close to Donald’s ear.

“I think they’re fun,” he murmured before pulling away. 

Donald shut his eyes to mentally erase the interaction. If he couldn’t see the way his cousin was staring at him, then it wasn’t really happening.

“Sis, explain the game to Fethry so we can get this over with.” 

Della shifted on the couch and held out her hands for demonstration. “Okay, so, basically everyone holds up all fingers like this at the start of the game, and when it’s your turn, you say ‘Never have I ever’ followed by something you’ve never done.” 

“Okay.”

“Everyone else puts a finger down if they’ve done it, or keeps it up if they haven’t. The first person with all fingers down loses. The person with the last ‘Never have I ever’ wins.”

“Okay, got it.”

“But there’s a catch: the loser has to do whatever the winner dares them to.”

“What!?” Donald yelped. 

“No backing down.” Della faced him as if directing the words to him and him alone. 

He sank into his seat with crossed arms and a tense scowl. Gladstone let out a cheery tune beside him, and Donald immediately got the sense that a dastardly scheme was afoot.

“I’ll go first,” the gander said and tossed a sideways glance. “Never have I ever puked on a rollercoaster.” 

The others chuckled. Donald put a finger down as soon as his hands were in the air. His suspicions were all but confirmed. 

“My turn,” he asserted, already out for revenge. “Never have I ever…uhh…” His eyes danced around the room in search of a response, saying the first thing that popped into his head when they landed on Gladstone. “Won a scratch-off ticket.”

Gladstone smirked as he was the sole member to lower a finger. “I see how it is.”

“Don’t you have to be eighteen for those?” Fethry asked incredulously. Nobody answered him.

“I’m next,” Della announced as she hopped in place. “Never have I ever been chewed out in front of the whole family.” 

Both Donald and Gladstone put another finger down, much to their dismay. 

“Weirdly specific,” Donald observed with a frown. “That shouldn’t count.”

“You’re up, Feth,” she continued, ignoring him.

“Oh, okay. Umm, never have I ever eaten cereal. Like the box kind. Oatmeal’s different.” 

Donald and Della vocally objected as they each curled a finger.

“Sorry we’re too classy for those sugar disasters,” Gladstone interjected, winking at Fethry who just looked confused by the gesture. “Hmm, hmm… Never have I ever grown my hair past my beak.”

“Now that’s just rude,” Della fussed as she put another finger down and tossed her head in Fethry’s direction. “This guy can’t even do that anymore.”

Donald cleared his throat, determined to win as fast as possible with his own scheme. “Never have I ever been the family favorite!”

He used his warped sense of self-worth to his advantage, beaming with pride as the others tossed him bizarre looks.

“Can’t argue that,” Gladstone jeered and marked the loss with his hand.

“Jeez, I’m gonna give that one to you out of pity,” Della commented as she curled a finger. Fethry wordlessly followed suit. “Um, anyway… Never have I ever, oh, heh, owned a shirt with the pockets already sewn into them.”

All the boys groaned and put a finger down.

“Cheap,” Fethry criticized after taking a generous bite of his snack for the first time that session. “Well, never have I ever broken an arm.” 

Della booed him but still conceded. Donald couldn’t help but laugh knowing how unnecessarily rough-and-tumbled his sister was.

“Never have I ever…” Gladstone paused as he appeared to pull an answer from the recesses of his idiotic brain. “...clashed colors with my outfits.” Donald joined the others in shooting him a detached stare. “You should all be putting your fingers down.”

Donald grumbled in the back of his throat but ultimately yielded. “Whatever. Never have I ever eaten sea-salt ice cream.”

“No way,” the others hollered almost in unison as their fingers went down.

“Uh-huh,” Donald affirmed. “Not really interested in it.”

“Oh that’s definitely going to change one day,” Della said almost threateningly as she entered her turn. “Let’s see… Never have I ever crashed my bike!”

Donald mentally cursed himself and put a finger down with the other boys, recalling the day they raced each other a little too hard around Duckburg. He peeked at his hands, only now realizing he had two fingers still standing and two cousins to go.

The stakes were higher than ever.

Fethry bounced in his seat and mumbled through a mouthful of food. “Never have I ever driven a boat! I want to, though.”

He put another finger down.

One left and one to go.

He stared down Gladstone who locked him in a tug-of-war glare. If he took his freakishly lucky cousin for the intelligent type, he would have thought the guy planned the entire night. But that was just as ridiculous as the building’s rumors, he thought.

Gladstone slowly opened his beak to talk. Donald swallowed a ball of anxiety and tried to convince himself that his mind was overreacting. 

“Never have I ever written a love song.”

Della erupted into honking laughter. Fethry mumbled to himself, staring at his fingers before putting one down, but it didn’t matter. Donald had lost, to Gladstone, the one thing he was hoping wouldn't happen. His accusations were brimming with proof.

He wanted to take back ever thinking his cousin was incapable of intentionally making him suffer. He really should have known better.

“No fair,” he lamented into his palms. “You guys were just ganging up on me.”

“Now why would we wanna do that?” Gladstone taunted. Donald scrunched his beak with a growl before Della raised her hands to stop whatever he was about to unleash.

“Well, that’s the end of that round. Sorry, Bro, but you gotta do whatever Gladstone says.”

“I’d rather eat cement fruitcake.”

“I want fruitcake…” Fethry whimpered dejectedly into his empty snack bag.

Gladstone intruded on Donald’s line of sight with a smarmy grin. “Hey, I dare you to go into the creepy room with me.”

The heat under Donald’s skin escaped through his anxious feathers and left him shivering. He knew exactly where the night was headed. 

Gladstone really had planned this all along. 

The offending goose leaned back to reveal Fethry's displeased scowl. “Why would you wanna do that?” his featherlost cousin asked.

“Yeah, Halloween was two months ago,” his sister remarked. “If you wanna scare yourselves silly just watch a movie.”

Donald shrank into himself as the scene unfolded without his input. He had a bad habit of letting others speak for him, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to give context to his protest. Not to the others. He had no way out.

“I think there’s something in there Uncle Scrooge is trying to hide, and Donaldo here is gonna find it for me.”

Fethry turned to Della with considerable alarm on his face. “Shouldn’t we go with them?”

Della opened her mouth to speak but Gladstone interrupted her. “Nope, just need two people. My win, my rules.”

The girl shrugged and pulled Fethry up with her. “He’s got a point. C’mon, we can go play ‘LegendQuest’ while we wait for them to come crying back like ugly ducklings.”

Gladstone chortled as he rose to his feet. Donald held his beak and groaned as he was dragged up with him.

“Hey, Don,” Della cut in with a hand on his shoulder. “Be safe?”

He cocked his head to the side in bewilderment before reassuring himself that she was probably referring to the room’s myths and not his untold business.

“Aw, you know I don’t believe in that stuff,” he reminded her and made his way to the stairs behind Gladstone.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. See you guys soon.” 

“If you find any night critters could you bring ‘em back?” 

The sound of Della’s laughter and Fethry’s drawn out expressions of confusion became incomprehensible as he stepped higher. A video game startup pinged then faded into obscurity as they reached the last of their climb. Then, at the top of the antiquated staircase, they were alone.

Donald's night had only just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ You Won't Believe What Happens Next! :D ]


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

“Man, the floor is louder than Della tonight,” Gladstone commented as they started down the fated corridor. 

Donald was tempted to correct Gladstone that he should be talking about himself, not Della, but wired his beak shut and marched on instead. He wondered if the weight of confession on his mind was what made the path beneath their feet so noisy. It was something he had been keeping from the other two, though he justified his silence on it since it technically never came up in conversation and they never confronted him outright. His conscience was cleared, even if he was fully aware of what awaited in the so-called forbidden room. 

The truth was, he and Gladstone had been there before, but that was only one part of the truth. If all that weighed on his mind was the simple fact of having been there already, he might have been able to share it. But the other part of the truth involved what happened inside, and the very thing he and Gladstone agreed upon that had them coming back in the first place. He didn’t have plans to tell the others about it, and he certainly didn’t have plans for it to sully his thoughts any longer than a second. 

“Why did you lie to them about the room?” Donald piped up when his racing thoughts threatened to grow louder than the creaking floorboards.

“Oh, Donny, give me some credit. I really do think Moneybags is hiding something big in there, we just haven’t found it yet.”

“Yeah…” His feathers puffed out as a chill ran down his spin. “I wonder why.”

“Besides, I don’t see _you_ telling them any differently.”

Donald released an uncertain noise in his throat at the accusation, and then it was quiet again. He didn’t like being proven wrong, especially not from Gladstone of all people. 

He kept his head down, not bothering to look up once, and he didn’t need to, either. Ever since their second rendezvous he had mapped out the floorplan like it was a childhood home. Tonight would mark their fourth visit, and he had already grown weary of all the ways it made him feel. All the reasons he had to keep hush about it. 

Ridding himself of the brief negativity, he picked up pace and urged Gladstone to do the same. They quickly finished their trek to the end of the hall where the now-familiar door towered over them. It was clearly locked, heavy in its foreboding appearance as well as its material. There were no signs of secret vents or airways to crawl through, and not even the doorknob had a traditional keyhole—it was no wonder people had avoided it all this time. When they first found themselves in the same spot months ago, Donald wasn’t even convinced there was a room on the other side, but just as they were about to give up, luck had it so the two of them unearthed its hidden wall and floor configurements. Like a scene right out of a comic book, the door unlocked before their eyes and granted them passage. It was still the same tonight. 

As if second nature, Donald and Gladstone mirrored each other’s feet and hand positions against various grooves on the surface until weight gave in under their touch. The door unlocked on its own just as it had in the past.

“I still don’t know why it would need two people to open,” Donald pondered as he stepped inside ahead of Gladstone.

“Uncle Scrooge is one of life’s greatest mysteries,” Gladstone opined, his voice cutting out from the door’s closure. 

The room, like everything else in the building, didn’t live up to its rumor mill hype. Really it could be mistaken for any other bedroom in the McDuck Manor with its high ceilings, ornate architecture, and modern furnishings that clashed with its vintage setting. The only unique spectacle about it were its trinkets and gadgets of the past, memorabilia without scars, that all held the trademark sign of being touched by Scrooge McDuck. Their first and lasting impression likened it to a sort of nostalgic comfort room, the very antithesis to the old miser’s worry room, and not at all a spooky chamber of death. Some of the remnants scattered about the place made sense. Most, though, were beyond them, and the only reason they could come up with for why it had been hidden for so long was that Scrooge didn’t want anyone knowing how sentimental he was. Or, of Gladstone’s insistence, there was a super secret treasure somewhere. They told each other they’d ask their uncle about it one day, when the mere existence of such questions didn’t make them out to be disobedient children. 

Apart from the oddities surrounding its existence, Donald could easily see why someone like Scrooge would find comfort in it. The room was warm and quiet, tucked away from the noise of such a busy life. Intimate shelter, by all accounts. It was in that way, and without intention, that it became the one place Donald knew nobody would look for him. A refuge from refuge, where he could sing and write and simply _be_ —it just so happened that Gladstone was always there with him. If the first floor was for the cousins, then the second floor was for the two of them. However the night developed, however persuaded by his mood swings, he could comfortably do whatever he wanted there. No probing questions about his life choices. No mockery or judgement of his musical skills. If he could go there alone he would, but of course he’d have to rely on Gladstone to get in. And once in there, once buried in the moments he only wanted to practice guitar, he’d end up practicing something else entirely, no questions asked.

His stomach churned in conflict just thinking about it.

“You look weird,” Gladstone said to knock him back to Earth. When he looked up the other boy was holding two glasses in one hand and an intricate, deep orange bottle in the other. “Scotch? At least I think it’s Scotch.”

Donald plopped down on a nearby reading chair and observed his cousin squint at the liquid like it would reveal its identity, quietly relishing in the ridiculous face he was wearing.

“If I look weird, then you look dumber than dumb.”

Gladstone expressed dissatisfaction through his nostrils. “It had a label on it last time. Sorry I’m not an alcoholic like you who knows every drink just by touching it.”

“Stop making stuff up!” Donald bayed in objection. “I barely even…wait.” His train of thought derailed as the gander’s words clung to his mind. “‘Last time’?”

The other boy faced him with blank eyes. “Yes?”

“So, it had a label on it when we were here a week ago, but now it doesn’t.”

Gladstone raised a brow, his eyes still half-lidded with disinterest. “Yes.”

Donald swallowed a sudden lump in his throat. “You don’t think someone else came in here, do you? Like Uncle Scrooge or, or one of the other adults? What if they saw my guitar and noticed all the stuff had been messed with and—”

—Figured out he and Gladstone had been up to no good?

“Cuz, _cuz_ , relax,” Donald heard but didn’t fully register his cousin tell him until he was taking up his entire view. “You remember how much we had, you probably tore it off in a stupor or something. You do a lot of things that don’t make sense.”

That was the problem, though: he really didn’t remember much of last time. Most of his memories were imperfect images, and when they were complete, all he could see were Gladstone and the bottom of a trash can.

He shook his head. This was no time for his brain to be so loud.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“See, this is why you need me. And some of this liquid magic.” 

Gladstone pointed to himself with a shrug of his shoulder and extended a glass. Donald took it without a second thought and stared into its tessellated design. He knew this was a bad idea. His brain knew it, his heart knew it, but his body accepted the offer, anyway. No matter how deep his friction ran, there was something about his cousin that drew him like a moth to a flame. When they had nights like these alone together, where neither of them had to think, it made reaching out and getting burned all the more enticing.

“Sure.”

“ _Heh_ -hey, there we go,” Gladstone cooed as he poured both of their drinks nearly to the brim.

“That’s way too much!” Donald protested. “Also, isn’t this supposed to go with ice?”

The goose shrugged. “You get less drink that way.”

“Now who sounds like an alcoholic…”

Donald brought the liquid to his beak and sniffed. The pungency alone was enough to knock him into next year, yet his hand stayed true on its path to get as much of the drink into his mouth as possible, as quickly as possible. He didn’t know the first thing about Scotch, but he was confident there was enough alcohol in there to shut his brain up, maybe even faster than last time.

“It all tastes like fire syrup, anyway,” he uttered and steeled himself.

With a single exhale he tilted his head back with the glass, jammed his eyes shut, and emptied the entire thing into his gullet. He didn’t care to taste it, embracing the inferno in his throat and extinguishing it with a coughing fit that had his cousin laughing in kind.

“Ha! You make the ugliest faces when you drink.”

“You’ve clearly never looked in a mirror.”

“More than you have.”

“Oh yeah!?”

Donald scowled and leapt forward, shoving Gladstone’s drink in his beak once he grabbed hold of the other’s arm, rendering him swallowing and gasping for air. 

“Hey, not cool!” Gladstone hollered and leaned in with an oddly intense expression, one that, despite his offended tone, looked more enthused than anything.

Donald threw himself back onto his seat and placed his empty glass on the small table between them. “Whatever. Put the cork back in the bottle before you kick it over.”

“Says the guy who just jumped me like a lion.”

Gladstone reluctantly did as told and wordlessly took his near-empty drink to the other side of the room. Donald let out a comforted sigh into the side of the chair’s cushioning, savoring the moment of respite while it lasted. He could still feel the liquid traveling down his system, leading a trail of fire to his belly and warming up his entire body. Time began passing without him, and his only indicator of the present was Gladstone’s loud rummaging at the other end of the room. 

He licked at his dry beak as he tried to make sense of his cousin’s actions next to a wooden bureau. “Are you going to finally look for whatever it is you’re looking for in here?” 

“Not it,” he could hear Gladstone mumble with an empty wallet in his hand, seemingly ignoring his question. “Hey, Don, you wanna help me find that top secret treasure?”

Donald folded his arms and reclined even further into his seat. “No.”

“Well then I’m stumped.”

“Seriously, you’re not even going to look by yourself? You do this every time.” 

He rubbed his head in frustration, not just at the headache his lazy cousin gave him, but also at having nothing else to do until his drink settled in.

“Because you refuse to help me every time,” Gladstone sassed, which was a complete fabrication to Donald’s knowledge but he didn’t want to fight. 

“I just want to sit and stare at the wallpaper a while.”

“Don’t settle for that ugly thing! Hold on.”

Donald blinked out of his massage and watched his cousin saunter around him to one of the bed’s night tables. His eyes narrowed into a squint as he made out vague details of a futuristic yet plain device, triggering an equally vague memory of his previous encounter.

“Oh yeah, is that the…what was it called?”

“Travel-thingamabob,” he answered and placed his drink on the table.

“Oh brother. I was definitely not involved in the naming process.”

“You remember how it works, right?” 

Thinking back on their previous visit, that was one thing he did recall with clarity. “Yes.”

“Changes the walls and stuff and takes you any place you want?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Donald emphasized when Gladstone was clearly not listening. “You know it’s probably just a pre-rendered projection. Like those white noise machines to help you sleep except with pictures.”

Gladstone sat on the bed with the device in his hands, unfazed by Donald’s scrutiny. “Where to, D-Money?”

“Again, just pictures. You don’t go anywhere with it.”

“Donald. Please.”

He stood up and groaned before setting down on the bed opposite his cousin. “I dunno. I just want to see the moon better.”

Gladstone lightly hiccuped, leaving him to wonder if the alcohol was already hitting him. “One moon roof, coming right up.” 

He gestured across the machine’s interface, punching in the proper details for a basic moon roof. The ceiling seemingly melted away to a halftone gradient that exposed the brilliant night sky above. A yellow orb tinged with blue floated defiantly against black, instantly illuminating the room with hues just as harmonious. Donald had never known the moon to be so beautiful.

“Wow,” Gladstone breathed in admiration. “Talk about a lucky view.”

Donald stared in wonder at the way the moon cast shadows across the other’s features, bathing him in a light he had never seen before. In that moment he wasn’t just Gladstone Gander, the obnoxious thorn in his side he pulled time and time again to no avail. He was the picturesque boy who found a way into his heart and made a home there. He was the thorny bush around his soul and all the roses that accompanied it. 

“Right, Cuz?”

He turned to Donald, who held his gaze and fought with all his might to will those familiar features into those of a stranger. But no matter how he tried to fool his eyes, the boy would always be his cousin. That fact would never go away. 

Donald sighed. “Yeah.”

He needed the Scotch to hurry up and do its job.

“Give me that,” he demanded, leaning over to take Gladstone’s glass and down its meager serving before the goose had any time to object.

“Jeez, that eager, huh?” 

Gladstone laughed, his eyes drooping. Donald figured the alcohol must’ve already been taking effect. The guy always was a lightweight. He wouldn’t miss that little bit of his drink.

“Why do you think Uncle Scrooge has all this, anyway?” Donald asks back at his spot on the comforter, wanting to stay distracted. “The drinks, this machine, that two-person lock…”

“Aside from the goods you refuse to believe me about? Beats me.”

“Well, what if there is no treasure and he’s just…a weird old man? Like, what if he’s seeing someone he doesn’t want us to know about, and they come here to be alone?”

Gladstone emitted an awful sound, something between a burp and a hiccup. “You mean like us?”

Donald contorted his facial muscles at the whiplash of disgust and embarrassment slamming into him. “It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Whatever you say, D-Money.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He exhaled at the edge of the bed and peered up at the artificial moon, reeling for a moment as it appeared to half-spin. The buzz in his head was crescendoing into a drumline. 

“So,” Gladstone crooned when silence filled the air. “What’s first?” He encroached on Donald’s personal space and unflinchingly brushed hands with him. 

“I wanted to play some while I was here,” he replied looking anywhere but at his cousin. 

“You mean your love song?”

“Why do you have to bring that up?” he bemoaned and put distance between them. “Why now, and why before in front of the others?” 

“Depends, are you gonna sing it to me again?” 

He closed his eyes, partly in annoyance and partly to ward off a dizzyspell. His heart was in his throat. “Not when you’re being weird about it.” 

“Ouch. How’re you going to woo girls if you don’t perfect your romantic ballad?”

“ _Ugh_ , you are so embarrassing.” 

He reached over and threw a pillow at Gladstone’s face before kicking off to the floor to search for his guitar case under the bed. It seemed to have moved a bit since he last remembered, which wasn’t much to be fair, so he tried to not overthink it.

In one fell swoop he yanked it by the handle and up onto the bed with him. Gladstone shifted over as he freed his guitar from its case and placed everything else on the ground. 

“What song are you practicing, then?” the gander inquired as Donald brought the instrument into his lap. 

“Not sure.” He plucked a few notes along the neck, grimacing at the sour tunes that followed. “Huh? Did the temperature drop do something to the strings?”

“Why don’t you try tuning it?”

Donald chuffed. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

He could feel Gladstone roll his eyes at him but he paid it no mind. He was too preoccupied on bringing his guitar back to normal playing levels. It might not have been his most prized guitar, but he still regarded it fondly. The last thing he wanted to deal with while tipsy was a dissonant jam session.

His fingers kept busy at the tuning pegs, adjusting one-by-one until his next attempt proved fruitless.

“C’mon, you stupid—”

“I don’t think you should tighten it anymore.”

He grimaced at the instrument in his hands and continued on the pegs. “What do you know about guitars?” 

“Enough to know you’re definitely overdoing it right now.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, really, I can practically hear it snapping.”

“It’s fine, I almost got it.” 

Donald feverishly maneuvered his hands back and forth between the fretboard and pegs. With each strum the discordance only seemed to get worse but he couldn’t stop. All he wanted was a few moments to play. 

Mostly, that was all he wanted. 

“Almost…there…”

“Don…” 

“What!?” 

_Thwack_. 

A string snapped in half and stung him across the beak. 

“Told you.”

He did. He did tell him, but Donald wasn’t about to admit defeat to his cousin. His whole body clenched. Heat swarmed him and tempted his mind into impulse. His throat bubbled with curses he’d leave unspoken. He gripped the guitar by its neck and was overcome with the urge to smash it to the ground.

“Whoa, whoa, hey,” he heard his cousin croon beside him. “Easy, tiger. Easy.” 

Before he could lift an inch of the guitar, a pair of hands were on his hunched back doing their damndest attempt at a massage. He froze, unsure whether to ease into it or use the guitar as a defense mechanism for escape. But as soon as soft fingers and palms worked their way to his exposed neck, digging at all the kinks there, he was reduced to a cooing duckling.

“Easy,” Gladstone repeated as he kneaded across tender feathers. 

It was obvious he was no pro, and the generous act was suspicious in and of itself coming from someone so self-absorbed, but he had to admit it felt relaxing enough. He pit it on the alcohol.

“There was so much I wanted to practice tonight.”

“Then just fix the string.”

“I can’t ‘just fix the string,’ the spares are back in _my_ room,” he retaliated, defying his subconscious call to be angry again. 

Gladstone huffed across the nape of his neck. It caused his mind to go into momentary shock.

“Well, whatever, do what you want.”

Donald careened forward out of Gladstone’s touch, hoping the room would catch him and nearly falling off the bed when it didn’t.

“Let’s just go back.” He rose up, completely unprepared for the effects of gravity to challenge his stability before sitting back down. “Crap.” 

Neither of them were in any state to face other people. The quiet air between them was as painful as his approaching headache, and he couldn’t tell if the rhythm of time passing through his ears was a nearby clock or his own pulse. The world around him turned hazy, warm, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.

Everything was catching up to him, fast. 

“I know what we can do,” Gladstone proposed after what felt like hours.

Donald tossed his head back and searched for the moon behind his cousin’s visage. “How?”

“Why don’t we try that thing again?” 

He leaned on his hands and hiccuped. “What ‘thing’?”

“I mean, let’s pick up where we left off last time.”

The artificial moon of the room’s projected night sky hid behind a group of clouds as if to mock him. He hadn’t the slightest clue what point in time this last charade might’ve been, and he didn’t care to ask. This was his fate now. He figured the only thing he could do now was make the most of it.

“Can’t play my guitar until I fix the strings, so. Sure.” 

“Really?” 

“Your weird luck would probably find a way to get me stuck here if I tried to leave, anyway.” If it hadn’t already been at work, he told himself.

His surroundings began to oscillate again. He sighed and sank into the comforter where the room vibrated less violently. Gladstone joined him on his side.

“Okay.”

Donald parroted Gladstone and remained on his back even as the other boy wriggled closer. His pulse was drumming in his ears, pounding away at his head. He inhaled; Gladstone was so close he could smell the earthy after-scent of liquor on his breath. It was almost as intoxicating as his first round. His hand at his side met his cousin’s and he exhaled, ashamed of the faint groan that went with it, but he quickly cast that shame aside. He finally remembered where they last left off.

Gladstone’s head turned in tandem with his and he closed his eyes as they came together. Their beaks bumped awkwardly but he refused to open for visual aid. His free hand hovered over his cousin’s figure, uncertain of where to go before landing squarely on his jaw. 

“No opening your eyes,” he instructed. “People don’t do this with their eyes open.”

“Mhm…”

Once sure of his proximity, and the buzz to take over for him, Donald held his cousin’s face and firmly bridged the gap between them. It was a chaste kiss, no more than than a brief moment of contact, but it had his breath picking up regardless. Using his hand on Gladstone’s face as an anchor, he brought the tip of his bill to the underside of the other’s beak and rubbed along the rounded edges there. Gladstone hummed and stroked into his jaw in a near identical manner, fitting for someone who boasted so much yet knew so little. It only helped to boost his confidence into doing more, acting bolder. He dragged the top of his beak around and rubbed the sides of their mouths together, shuddering at the small groan that seeped through from his companion. His breath on Gladstone’s, Gladstone’s breath on his—

His mind went into a frenzy of ideas with no sign of going back.

He tilted his head and pushed into his cousin’s mouth urgently, needfully, like it was his only source of oxygen. Gladstone whined deep in his throat, and when the boy denied him entrance into his mouth, Donald used his tongue to open it up. He dove in, using the shorter length of his beak to angle in ways Gladstone never could, pulling reactions from him with each taste. Every now and then their teeth would scratch their tongues and their beaks would scrape against each other, but they quickly leveled out into a heated rhythm devoid of pained grunts. Gladstone was good, but Donald knew he was even better, and before long he was using everything at his disposal to monopolize his cousin. He bit when Gladstone was expecting licks, pinched when he was expecting pets, hurdling them into competitive overdrive. The air filled with the wet sounds of spit traveling between their mouths, and when it became too heady to breathe through his nostrils, the air was soon mixed with breathless moans, too. 

Donald was glad they both reeked of alcohol. He couldn’t be blamed for his bad breath this time. 

In the midst of a particularly rough kiss, Gladstone hooked a leg over Donald and pressed his body so close that a quarter of the gander was on top of him. 

And that’s when he felt it.

Every time they practiced on each other, Gladstone’s _thing_ pressed into him without a care to its existence. He didn’t even make an effort to hide it. At least Donald tried to be subtle about it—shift away, keep his mind preoccupied on something else, cover it with a pillow—but Gladstone never seemed to care. What was worse, he didn’t seem to be aware of it. It always happened so quickly, so unabashedly, so…in the way. 

He really hated it.

“Hey, Don,” Gladstone broke apart to pant, “what’re you thinking about?”

Blood rushed from Donald’s head down to his lower body. His eyes snapped open of their own volition and sought after the distraction between the other boy’s legs. He could feel the other’s eyes on him.

“Nothing.”

Gladstone scoffed in his throat. “Well, no wonder your kisses started sucking, you weren’t thinking of _me_.”

“Oh, lay off, this isn’t about you!”

Donald ripped his eyes from his cousin’s erection, praying it went unnoticed, but he knew his misfortune better than that. Gladstone blinked heavily and tilted his head down to what captured Donald’s attention, leering and smirking all the while.

“Ahh, so you were thinking of me.”

Donald hid his face in the other’s emerging chest fluff and let the room spin around him. When that proved to be too much he pushed away with a firm hand and groaned into the vertigo.

“You are so unbearable.”

“Does it bother you?”

Gladstone shifted on his side. Donald fought to ignore how it accentuated certain body parts. 

“Everything about you bothers me.” 

Something akin to hurt flitted across Gladstone’s face that caused his muscles to twitch, but Donald had no time to pay it any mind—and he already had half a mind, besides.

“Then why were you staring at it?”

“I wasn’t _staring_ at it.”

“Are you jealous that it’s bigger?”

“ _Wak_ —” He shoved even further away and immediately sat up, taking some of the comforter with him. “Only you would be delusional enough to believe that.”

Gladstone lifted his torso by the arms and chased in Donald’s shadow. “Don’t feel bad, Cuz. I think yours is cute.”

Donald sobered up to deliver the meanest glare he could muster before falling under again. “‘ _Cute_ ’?”

“Well, yeah, I mean just look at it.” The other boy inched closer on his knees and palmed the underside of Donald’s erection. “It fits perfectly in my hand.”

Donald shook with his entire mind, body, and soul. His cousin’s hand was on him, on his _dick_ , with fingers mere centimeters away from his hole. It worked him up hotter than any of his own solo sessions, to the point where he had to wonder if the gander in front of him was really Gladstone at all. The guy was stupid to many faults; there was no way he knew what he was doing to him. It was outrageous. Absurd. 

Yet part of him allowed it to consume him. 

The world spun around him as his mind flashed with impulse, but instead of anchoring himself to Earth’s stillness, he spun out with it.

“And yours is stupid and ugly, just like you!”

“Huh?”

Uncaring to his words or the consequences thereafter, Donald lurched forward and grabbed hold of Gladstone’s member with a firm squeeze. He couldn’t stand how small his hand looked in comparison.

“You’re always like this,” he berated, swinging his hips closer and keeping his line of sight on his cousin’s warped expressions. 

Gladstone shuddered against Donald’s grip and pressed into him harder, sending them both into a brief tug-of-war. “What does that even mean?”

Donald’s thoughts lagged as Gladstone’s breathing hitched and their holds on each other tightened. Truly he himself didn’t know what he meant, but he wanted his cousin to take responsibility for the night somehow.

“You rope me into dumb things and, and make fun of me.” Donald emphasized his claim with a harsh pump around the other’s tip. His thumb was instantly coated in a tepid substance.

“I do n- _ah_ -not,” the other boy stuttered on a heavy moan that punched through Donald with an electric current. “This was your idea.”

The way Gladstone looked at him—like he wanted _him_ and not simply the act itself—made his entire lower body tremble with pleasure.

He couldn’t stand it. 

They had come to this place to explore each other, to use each other as practice for the future, they claimed, but the conversation ended there. There were no talks of wanting each other, only knowledge and expertise. They could figure out the perfect methods, what feels right and what feels wrong, but it was never for something as ridiculous as mutual feelings. To do it, just because—no, it was all for someone else eventually, this way was just easier, they reasoned. It was a convincing argument. He was sure lots of other people did it. As long as they kept it brief. And fueled by liquor. And never spoke of it to another soul as long as they lived. It was never meant to make him react the way he did. It was never meant to make him desire the unobtainable. 

Donald jumped in his feathers when a clammy hand wrapped around his forearm. He steadied his rocky gaze back on his cousin and braced against the wave of nausea that washed over him.

“You still, thinking about nothing?” Gladstone managed to ask through uneven laughter. 

He watched in a stupor as Gladstone lifted his head with closed eyes and rocked his body into Donald’s unsteady palm. He took the short moment of reflection to peer down at his cousin’s hand on him working just as unsure yet eager, and cursed under his breath at how smooth it felt. How good it felt, inexperience be damned.

He didn’t want to look anymore. He didn’t want to think anymore, and he considered himself lucky for the first time that night as the alcohol finally settled in comfortably enough to achieve that goal. He clung to Gladstone no matter how much it overheated him, just to avoid having to see anything but the outdated decor over his shoulder. His free arm constricted around thick feathers, refusing Gladstone the opportunity to break free and meet gazes with him. The other boy squirmed in his hold but he refused to let up. 

“What gives?” Gladstone groaned into his ear, which didn’t help the throbbing between his legs.

“It feels better when you, can’t see each other,” he breathlessly stated, though it was completely unfounded. He had no idea what he was doing.

“Yeah well it’s making my wrist cramp, being this close,” the other boy whined in a way that should have enraged him but here it only spurred him on.

If there was anyone who should have been complaining about wrist cramps, it was Donald, but Gladstone’s size being a challenge was more than he wanted to openly admit.

“Shush, it’ll build endurance.” 

“You still won’t outlast me.”

“ _Shush_.” He didn’t know if the command was for his cousin or his own incessant thoughts. 

The boy conceded with a noisy exhale, spreading his legs to allow him more access and settle against him. His free hand maneuvered itself off Donald's arm and to his hip, playing with his tail feathers in the most distracting way possible. Donald swatted at it to signify his disapproval, which earned him a few grumbles before it was moved to his leg instead. The hand on his erection pumped furiously, not at all how he would do it himself and still out of cadence with his hand on Gladstone. For moments too long an awkward harmony built between them. Donald found a way to keep pace with his cousin before either of their hands slipped or pulled down too harshly and they had to start all over. 

The warmth in his core seemed to travel between the warmth in his hands, slick and loud. His chest expanded as Gladstone’s collapsed. In, out, push, pull. Nothing surrounded them but the smell of their deed and the audible proof of their efforts. There was no talking—at least, as their ministrations went on, he couldn’t remember anything but debaucherous groaning. Though, it wasn’t like he would try to communicate with Gladstone through something like this in the first place.

The hand on his leg shifted, tightened. Gladstone’s grip on his dick started to lose steam.

“Hey, Donald, are you close?” he moaned softly, softer than the hand on his shame. Donald did nothing but mumble. 

“ _Nnh_.”

“No, seriously, ‘cause I think I’m—”

“Just, _nnh_!”

He grunted impatiently in response, not willing to answer with words. Of course he was close, but the more Gladstone spoke the harder it was for him to focus on not losing control. He would’ve rather died than finish first.

Donald willingly ignored his cousin's reply. His sounds were amplifying, intensifying in their volume and filth. Donald tried to tune it out by staring at the plain wall, focusing solely on matching the jerking motions of his cousin’s hand and maintaining rhythm. He tried to keep his thoughts only on how it felt for him, but his head was abuzz with Gladstone’s voice and all that it meant. _He_ was the one doing this to him. _He_ was the one making his cousin cry out for more. It did strokes of wonder to his ego. Among other things.

He wondered if he would ever have a moment like this with someone else.

“Cuz… _haa_ , Donald…”

The intoxicating timbre of Gladstone’s pleas jerked him from his wandering mind and stole a wail from his lungs. Soon he found himself unable to tell their voices apart, too swept up in the pleasure and letting his mind and body act out as it pleased. His muscles tensed, his feet cramped up—everything was on fire like he was about to burst. A rolling wave of heat traveled throughout his body before settling in his lower abdomen and overwhelming him. He could no longer keep it at bay. 

The beginning of Gladstone’s name rolled off his bitten tongue but the gander beat him to it, moaning out his name with such desperation that it made him see stars. Tepid ribbons splayed all over his hand as Gladstone held on, his hips sputtering as he came undone, and it flung Donald over the edge. He jammed his eyes shut and focused his entire body as it was thrown at the mercy of orgasm. He could hear the room spin in his ears, see lightning behind his eyes, all the while trying to ground himself against the crash of spilling into his cousin’s hand. His fingers dug into Gladstone’s back as he humped out the last of his spill, no care in the world for where it ended up. 

He didn’t know how much time passed once he opened his eyes again, only that Gladstone’s lust in his palms had receded enough to slip out and his own member had done much the same. The other boy’s voice echoed in the room but he couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. His entire nervous system was fried, unable to cool off or collect itself. The environment pulsated with the heartbeat in his ears, drowning out anything his cousin was doing. He pulled away on instinct and looked down at the result of his night. His hand was coated, dripping from fingertip to wrist. It didn’t seem real. He absentmindedly lifted his arm until the mess was at his horizon line in an attempt to inspect it up close. His eyes crossed down the line of his beak, struggling to hone in on his hand with the blur of his cousin behind it. 

Something sticky dripped onto the tip of his beak, a vile substance he lagged to realize came from his hand. Its pungent odor snaked its way up to his nostrils and sent his stomach into an erupting whirl.

The spinning world and all his misdeeds slammed into him at once.

“Oh no.”

Donald’s body flung him off the bed and across the room in defiance of his unbearable vertigo. He could hardly feel his feet sprint across the antiquated hardwood but he knew he had to move urgently. His understanding of his surroundings came in pieces as his consciousness lapsed by the second. There was a dresser to his left, suddenly replaced by a bare wall and somehow nauseating enough to force his head down. The mahogany floor transformed into porcelain tile right before his eyes. At some point he dropped to his knees, or maybe his legs just gave up on him. Painful yellow light pierced his retinas. A toilet bowl appeared.

And then.

“Gladstone, hel—”

Nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Oh No!! :(( ]


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Ehhhh this is kind of a mess. I'm sorry. ]

* * *

Black stretched on and on as far as his eyes could see, and in truth Donald wasn’t sure if his eyes were even open. Around him was nothing but a pool of inky sludge with his body square in the center of…something. Or was it nothing? Wherever and whatever it was, it weighed his body down—first by his legs, then by his side—until the mere concept of movement seemed impossible. His body felt neither cold nor hot though he knew it should've been be one of those. He just didn’t care. If he had to admit, it was quite a peaceful place. Maybe he could stay there a while.

As if to deny him his murky bliss, a series of words rang out though he couldn’t understand them. A change in tonality here and there, accompanied by agitating sounds, but nothing concrete. And yet, his mind understood it to be calling out to him. He was compelled to answer.

“What, what is it,” Donald stated rather than asked, struggling for what felt like a lifetime of blinking just to force himself into consciousness. When his eyes finally landed on something discernible and he realized he had been dreaming, the visage of his cousin did little to ease his disoriented head.

“Hey, Cuz,” the other boy quavered, his volume at an odd but pleasant level for once.

“Gladstone!?” 

Donald choked in surprise, urgently sitting up and bumping their heads in the process. The pain drilled between his ears with a dull hum so loud it almost drowned out Gladstone’s brow-furrowed hush. The duo’s eyes flew to the other side of the room where Della twisted under bed sheets, and soon the hum in his ears was replaced by his anxious heartbeat. They both stilled in silence and released equally shaky sighs when the girl showed no signs of waking up. Donald took in an exhausted breath, held it for five seconds, and let it go before facing his cousin.

“What time is it and why am I in my room?” he addressed quietly, his thoughts utterly muddied.

He watched Gladstone peer down at a newfangled wristwatch he had never seen before but knew it couldn’t have been stolen; thievery wasn’t possible when things always conveniently landed in his cousin's hands.

“Four-fifty AM, and I dragged you here,” Gladstone said with his chest. “You’re welcome.”

Donald blinked in a stupor. “How is it almost five? What was I even…” 

The gears in his brain began working at a snail’s pace as he retraced his steps. Pieces of the night locked into place periodically, mostly in no order he could make sense of, but they formed a cohesive enough picture for his stomach to drop in realization bit by bit. There was the party. The glasses of Scotch. The bottom of the inside of a toilet.

His belly filled with nauseous dread.

“Oh no. Ohmygosh. Don’t tell me—”

An all-over hot and cold sensation came back to him as he reflexively clenched his fists, which must have been noticeable since Gladstone put a hand on his shoulder almost instantly. It was methodical, like a prelude to a sarcastic victory speech, joined by a smarmy grin to support it. Gladstone was nothing if not dramatic. 

“Re- _lax_ , Donald,” the boy emphasized as quietly as Donald was ever used to hearing. “You didn’t get any puke on me.” 

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he fussed. 

“Jeez, okay. After your gross-out in the bathroom we just kind of walked back.” 

“Here?”

“What? No, to the others. Downstairs.”

“Where the party was.”

“Where Feth and Della were.”

Gladstone corrected him as if offended by the suggestions. Donald’s eyes shifted to around as if it would help, but his mind kept drawing incomplete circles. 

“What did they say?” 

His cousin looked at him puzzled. “Not much, why?”

Donald returned the look with equal perturbance. “They didn’t ask about us or, or about the room?”

“I mean, _meh_ , they tried to make fun of you for being so comatose with fear, or whatever they called it. Then this one over here pulled our poor featherlost cousin back to the party.” 

Gladstone removed his hand from Donald’s shoulder and gestured theatrically to the other bed. Donald’s eyes continued to strain as he mentally searched for answers. He wasn’t entirely convinced with the information he was receiving. Uncovering the night’s full events would require a bit more investigative work, he figured.

“Okay, I think I remember walking to the couch.” He didn’t, really. “But we went back to the manor after them, right?”

“Kind of.”

His feathers blanched. “‘Kind of’?” 

“Hmm. You were really out of it. Didn’t want to leave the couch.”

That part he had not a single memory of, and he was growing impatient. He would have been hollering and causing a scene by then if it weren’t for the extra company nearby. 

“Then when _did_ we go back?”

“Can’t say for sure, D-Money. You were on that couch with me for a while. You didn’t want to let go.”

The name he hated, the varying possibilities of his cousin’s ambiguity—the words spun around in his mind and he had no intention of learning what further meaning they held. 

“So after that…and we walked back…did anyone else say anything?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” 

“Because your answers suck!”

Donald locked onto Gladstone with scrutinizing eyes, forcing himself to push down his vocal rage. Gladstone’s face contorted vaguely in the pale light of the moon as he shifted on the bed and flipped an exaggerated palm in the air.

“Let’s just say that was the sloppiest Uncle Scrooge I had ever seen. Way more generous than usual, too. All the adults were a mess.”

The story was hazy yet detailed enough for Donald to understand. Satisfied enough with the turn of events to not ask anymore questions, he threw himself back down on his pillow, his head still pounding in all directions. 

“Thank goodness for that.”

“Why do you care so much, anyway?”

Donald rubbed his aching temples. Being caught drinking was one thing. Being caught in an unabashed cousin rendezvous was something else entirely. He was hardly able to reconcile with the night and his own thoughts, let alone have others know his truth, too. So it mattered to him greatly, and it greatly frustrated him that Gladstone acted so oblivious to the tightrope they walked. He couldn’t decide if it was the gander’s luck or his stupidity that saved their hide that night, all things considered.

“Why do I care if people found out we were over there drinking?” he overstated, choosing to gloss over any mention of their full romp. “You can’t be serious.”

He could hear Gladstone shrug in his evening suit. It only intensified his headache. 

“It’s never bothered you before, so, y’know, why now?”

An image of their hands on each other surfaced to the forefront of his mind, unwarranted and unforgiving, and he found himself receding his legs in swift discomfort. 

“Whatever. I’m just glad everybody was too far gone to notice we ever left.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t look too good yourself. Again, be grateful I was your DD.”

Donald squinted in the darkness. “My what?”

“‘Designated’… Uh… Ah, it doesn’t matter.”

The pair fell into silence. Only a quiet orchestra of breaths filled the air, and when that became too loud, Donald was the first to speak up. 

“Thanks for helping me, I guess.” 

He hated one-sided thank-yous, especially when they made Gladstone react with an air of kingly pride. 

“Did you think I was just going to leave you there?” Donald didn’t respond. Gladstone seemed to accept that as an answer in itself as he pushed back his hair with a grinning sigh. “Well, it’s whatever in the end, because you owe me big time.”

A thin white line from Gladstone’s smile emerged as faint recollections of the night rocked Donald against the bed despite his stiff body. He clamped fabric between his legs to calm his nerves but the contact with his sensitive feathers only worsened them.

“Don’t start.”

“ _Me_ start? If anything I’m finishing what _you_ started.”

Donald knew words were coming out of his cousin’s mouth but he couldn’t process them. He just wanted to sleep and let memory loss do the rest. His patience had long since been stretched thin. Whatever Gladstone had in mind for his impromptu IOU he could deal with later. 

“Okay, fine, I owe you. Can I go to sleep now?”

“Sure thing, Pukey.” 

Gladstone hovered over him and brought their beaks together for a moment too quick for Donald to register whether a tongue had been involved or not. His head snapped to the side in panic of being exposed before returning to his cousin who was already trying to climb into bed with him.

“What’re you doing!?” Donald demanded as quietly as he could, which was a nigh impossible task with his raspy voice. 

Gladstone blinked in the sliver of light behind them. “You’ve got room for two, don’t you?”

“I—what? Are you dumb?”

The other boy snorted and held his grimacing expression. “Not any dumber than you. Now let me in, Moneybags turned off the heat.”

Lifting the covers clean off Donald’s figure, Gladstone crawled into bed, shoved him over, and dropped the fabric on them in one fell swoop. Donald’s vision was obscured from the rest of the room, and he had no choice but to accept his current fate. He angled his head up and away, at the ceiling where he stared at nothing in particular. His arms attached to his sides straight as a board with the rest of his body. Every time he made an attempt to inch against the windowsill, Gladstone only managed to get closer, and he wanted nothing more than to kick him right out if the guy wasn’t as heavy as a boulder. Or rather, if Donald didn’t have such weak legs. He wasn’t much of a Junior Woodchuck, after all.

“Tonight was something else, huh?” Hot air on his throat tempted him but he would not tear his eyes from the patterned surface above. “Huh?” Gladstone repeated.

Donald scoffed and rolled onto his back, still avoiding eye contact. “I know what you’re doing and I’m not falling for it.”

“Falling for… What?”

“You’re trying to make me blab about something you can use against me later.”

“What does that even mean? That’s never happened.”

“ _Un_ likely story.”

“Hey, how come you’re allowed to be upset but I’m not?”

“Because you aren’t upset.”

“Well, maybe not right now, but if I was, it’d definitely be your fault.”

Donald whipped around, sheets mussed up between their bodies and hardly providing any barrier. “What do you want, anyway? We already had our thing.” 

He kept it ambiguous. Any explicit mention or thought to the night and he worried he might go unconscious again, which was something he wanted _after_ his offending cousin was gone. 

“So why not have some more of it?”

The space between them felt smaller and smaller as they spoke, and either Gladstone had sneaked his way closer or Donald’s mind was playing tricks on him. A piece of him hoped it meant he was somehow still tipsy.

“We’re in my room, not the garden house,” he started to explain, his train of thought interrupted by dry warmth abruptly gliding over his feathers as he dropped his line of sight to Gladstone’s proximity. “We do that there. Not here.”

Gladstone shifted with a thoughtful hum. “I don’t remember that being in the official rules.”

“Yeah, well—” Donald meant to say more, but his line of thinking was completely cut short by a certain _thing_ poking his lower belly. He careened his head away and stared at Gladstone with wild eyes. “Are you serious!?”

Gladstone looked down, his half-lidded expression largely unchanged once he caught sight of his own erection. “Oh. _Haha_ , oops.”

“Don’t ‘oops’ me, this is crazy! You think you can—… You think I’m just gonna—…” 

“ _Hmmm_?”

The boy inched closer with an inquisitive hum, sparing no space between them. Their beaks scratched against each other and the more they exchanged breaths the more Donald found it difficult to keep his head pointed away—both the one atop his shoulders and the one emerging near his legs.

“We can’t,” he attempted to protest despite his shaky voice. 

“We can.”

Gladstone placed a chaste hand on Donald’s hip and thumbed it in circles. His heart skipped a beat and his hips hitched forward with the same rhythm no matter how much he tried to stop it. The tips of their beaks made contact, and it tickled him so strongly in a way it never had before that he had to divert his attention elsewhere. On impulse he brought his own hands to Gladstone’s face and held on for dear life as their eyes landed on each other.

“But Della…”

He found himself stroking the side of his beak to Gladstone’s as his vision tunneled. The other boy reciprocated the act, rubbing more area with his large bill. It was so smooth and strong, not at all like his own. It wasn’t fair.

“I’ll be quiet. I promise.”

Their hips and legs connected and he groaned in time with his cousin. The will to satiate overpowered his will to withdraw. Even his hands got comfortable, threading through quaffed featherlocks and enjoying the softness there. Gladstone had always felt better than his own feathers. Almost everything felt better with Gladstone.

“Yeah…right…”

He closed his eyes and allowed his body to act as it wanted. His hands and beak fumbled in the dark, immediately indulging in whatever surfaces they could find and granting no mercy. Their hips moved against each other with little unison but it didn’t matter. The sensation of Gladstone’s slicked member on his own, gliding along the sides and prodding with varying pressure—it was enough to get him where he needed to be. Soon the only thing in his ears were the wet sounds of their pleasure and the ardent whispers of their labored efforts, harmonious with the softly creaking mattress beneath them. 

Donald could hear everything. Feel everything. Every thought was at the forefront of his mind, occupying the same amount of space and wailing with the same level of intensity. Heat accompanied him, but it wasn’t the same as in the garden house. Here it lapped at his soul like an undying flame, both scorching hot and bleeding cold at once, working in fervent unison as he rocked into Gladstone. His jaw clenched so tightly he heard his teeth scrape in his skull, and it wasn’t long before his parched tongue was breaking free to search for nectar. The salty, disgusting, not-at-all sweet nectar of his cousin’s sweat that beaded down so generously for him to soak up. He licked at Gladstone’s neck, a whine escaping as soon as he allowed his tongue freedom. He bit down on the boy’s fluffed curvature to stifle his moans, nearly slicing through his tongue as he flicked it, and dragged his tongue back to where it belonged in the other's beak. 

“ _Aahn_ , Don…” 

Gladstone whimpered into Donald’s open-mouthed kiss but he ignored it. He was too concentrated on his movements and all the ways it made him feel. His attention honed in on the bubbling heat in the pit of his stomach, the ache in his lower back, even the strain down in his legs. It was all approaching him fast. Too fast, he realized, and his heart sped up for other reasons. He knew the signs of an approaching climax, but that couldn’t be right. It had never happened so soon before, and he was hardly doing anything. Was Gladstone close, too? Gladstone didn’t seem to be, but what if they really were both close? How would he take care of it once it was over? He didn’t have any tissues or wipes nearby. They’d have to go somewhere else to clean up, or worse if it got on the bed. Della might not wake up but they’d still have to go into the hall for the nearest bathroom or washroom and that amount of noise could wake up even their Uncle Scrooge and then—

“Hey, Earth to Donnie.”

Donald rolled his tongue back into his mouth and opened his eyes. “Huh?”

“You slowed down. Like, way down. What happened?”

“What? Nothing happened.”

“You’re doing that weird overthinking thing again, aren’t you?”

“No I’m not.”

“Uh-huh, I bet you’re thinking about how to clean up or something.”

If he admitted he was, it would mean one more drip in the bucket of things Gladstone could use against him later. He’d call him a coward, a hypocrite, any dumb accusation his goose brain could come up with. Donald wanted to grow into a man of his word, or at least prove to be someone who came out on top despite it all. The way he saw it, there was no other way out of the night’s mess than by ending it on his terms, even if it meant going down the same path as before. Good feelings were just a bonus, and that was all there was to it. Right?

“Stop being weird and trying to read my mind,” Donald grumbled before biting the tip of Gladstone’s blabbering beak shut.

Gladstone mumbled angrily before he was released. “Well maybe you shouldn’t have such an easy mind to read!”

Donald was so surprised by Gladstone's remark that he didn’t object at all when the gander retaliated with a rough kiss. They took turns trading aggressive nips wherever they could: inside, outside, along necklines and hands rested nearby. There were no limits. His thoughts raced yet at the same time were cleared of droning mental static from hours prior. All those feelings had returned, but where before it was in his head, here it was truly in and around him, as if everything on Gladstone was also on him. The friction, the temperature, the exertion under sheets and all struggle to keep quiet—it was like working as two people within one body. The prickling on his skin and the electricity flowing through his nerves had pinpoint sensation, not at all like the vague wash of pleasure that he succumbed to in the past. It was intense and unknown, something that heated his blood like Gladstone’s touch heated his skin. It was confusing, hungry, shy. Frightening in a new way. 

“Donald… _haa_ , Don- _nnh_.”

Donald did nothing but shush through his teeth. Gladstone’s ragged groans seeped into his pores and lit his body on fire from the inside out. The heat crept up to his head and clouded all thoughts to impulse and aggression. All he wanted was to monopolize his cousin, devour him whole, spurred on by a bite to the other’s shoulder, and it was in that moment he realized what he was afraid of most. 

“Please, _agh_ —”

“Sh-, _mhfh_ -, shut up—”

He was afraid of himself and all the limits he was capable of breaking. All because of Gladstone.

In the recess of his mind he heard the sound of Della shifting again before the whole thing swallowed his attention. The scratching of cheaply threaded sheets against cold webbed feet echoed like a gunshot in his brain and he paused his motions. Gladstone didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to react at all, in fact. But the noise kept blaring in Donald’s ears despite his sister no longer moving under warm covers. It encircled his mind like a swarm of pests, acting as a reminder of everything he had ever done. He swore he could even hear them verbalize their distaste of his actions, buzzing about in his ears while he pursued his guilt. 

Why did he care? Gladstone sure didn’t. But maybe that was exactly what set them apart. Maybe that, more than anything, was why this would never work.

His stomach churned and his head throbbed on every other beat of his quivering hips, flinging his rhythm into complete disorder from the overpowering distraction. He couldn’t recall what he even planned to say next. 

“Gladstone,” he mumbled into the other’s feathers in an attempt to quell his anxious mind but it was already too late. Its sound dispersed with the moan of the boy in question and took whatever certainty he had with it. 

He issued a quiet cessation of their activities instead and, when his order went ignored, cursed harshly through his labored breath.

“Huh?” Gladstone squeaked with naivety so saccharine it railed against his nausea.

“Hold on a second,” Donald clarified and separated their bodies without hesitation.

The other boy coughed momentarily to catch his breath. Donald did the same. 

“What, you still worried about the mess? It'll be fine.”

“ _Eugh_ , no. I want to stop.”

“Really.”

The flatline of Gladstone’s voice chilled him to his core. He only knew his cousin to speak with such a tone whenever things weren’t going his way. Was he disappointed? Confused? It shouldn’t have been hard to figure Gladstone out and it shouldn’t have even mattered what he thought. But it did. And Donald resented the both of them for it.

“Yeah. Let’s not do this after all.”

He spoke with a sincerity that his body had yet to match, and he had a newfound appreciation for the hidden privacy of bed sheets.

“Okay, for how long?”

“For how— _ugh_. I mean let’s not do this at all, ever.”

“Like…forever ever?”

“Yes, ‘forever ever.’”

Donald drew his legs to his chest and faced the wall, bombarding his mind with dull thoughts to calm the throbbing at his lower body. He could sense Gladstone hovering close like some sort of puppy, scheming up what it would take to kick the guy out. It was Gladstone's fault for putting his mind and body through so much back-and-forth torture.

“But why? Don’t you _like_ this stuff?”

A memory of their first awkward kiss flashed in his mind. He replaced it with a vision of his least favorite food.

“No.”

“Never?”

The mental imagery morphed into the first time he ever jerked off to the thought of his cousin. He fought to transform it into a picture of boring landscapes.

“Nope.”

“Never _ever_?”

“No, already! Go back to your own room. I just want to go to sleep.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Not another word was spoken. The only sounds that filled the air were ones of nature outside and the mattress sinking under Gladstone’s shifting weight. His body dipped and the temperature behind him cleared due to what he assumed was his cousin’s exit from the bed. He sighed in relief, finally ready to ease his mind to slumber.

That was, until a sudden shake of the mattress springs sent a jolt to his heart that had him far from relaxed. 

“Are you one-hundred-percent sure? I feel like you’re lying to me. Are you lying to me? Huh?” 

Gladstone interrogated him with a cocky lilt to his whispers, and before Donald could defend himself his cousin was pressing up against him. Arms and legs closed in on him, tightly, heavily. Almost suffocatingly. Gladstone’s erection pushed into him just as fiercely, dangerously close to his hole and he panicked, but it felt so _good_. His mind nearly blanked. The boy was still so rigid and sopping wet, he wondered if it could slip in without any effort even though it was so big. And then he shook his head violently and un-wondered it, because he already put a stop to their rendezvous and all such thoughts. No more seesaw mental gymnastics. No more Gladstone. No more, no more, no more—

“I…am not…lying,” he grunted against a fidgeting goose and unfurled his limbs. “Now get… _off_!”

With as much pent up energy as he could muster he shoved Gladstone off his body, and though he wasn’t expecting it, he was somewhat relieved to find the boy on the floor. Until he remembered a certain sleeping duck only a few feet away and quickly scrambled to the edge to pacify any potential hollering.

“Ah, look, I’m sorry for shoving you like that. Are you okay?” 

He kept his eyes on Della’s bed as he spoke, watchful for any sign that they were being listened to. When his line of sight was overtaken by Gladstone’s rising torso, he figured it best to finally look him in the eye. His face was unreadable in the dark.

“Who knew my baby cousin was so tough? Yeah, of course I’m okay.”

The boy chortled but his expression didn’t seem to complement it. Donald swallowed a cold, dry lump of uneasiness into his sunken stomach. The abrupt shift in the atmosphere made him uncomfortable, but he chalked it up to another one of his cousin’s asinine tactics to guilt him. He just had to get the guy out of there and go to sleep. Problem solved.

“Um, that’s good. So…good night?”

“Sure. G’night, ‘Cuz.” Gladstone straightened out his clothes and turned to walk away before stopping himself mid-step. “When you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

He quickly leaned over and planted a kiss to the rear of Donald’s beak, right on his jaw in a spot that never failed to send shivers down his spine and leave him hot and bothered. It would have worked if he hadn’t wanted to throw up and dissolve along with the aftermath.

“I hate you,” he bemoaned into his pillow.

“And I’m unlucky,” Gladstone playfully cooed as he walked to the door and left without closing it behind him. 

Light from the hallway cast a beam onto Donald’s face but he was too exhausted to do anything about it. Somewhere in the corridor a pair of feet made their noisy descent, and he squirmed with every creak like they were at war with each other. Smatterings of his cousin’s voice crept into his mind, hot in his ears and dripping with lust so vividly it was as if the boy had never left. He covered his head with a choked whine. 

The night crash, as he familiarized it, was already taking its toll on him. It was like clockwork: his mind would wander backwards, to his mishaps with Gladstone, but he rarely did so willingly, and he didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to remember especially _then_ , alone in his bed, with no way to get rid of the feeling. The foul, suffocating warmth around him. It never felt as good once he was alone with it. 

But he’d be alright, he reassured himself. This was a phase he already made plans to move past. Nothing more than a weird interest brought on by raging hormones and curiosity. Every teenager had one, didn’t they? So there was no harm in a little dance with the taboo as long as it was temporary. By tomorrow it’d be gone, and soon he’d return to his normal self. He just had to wait out one more rough night. He didn’t need nor want Gladstone. Their brief moments of pleasure and joy meant nothing. The flecks of overwhelming affection meant nothing. It all meant nothing. Nothing.

“Damnit.”

Donald burrowed under covers and spent the rest of the early morning curled away from his sister, away from the world, wishing upon whatever star above that he would wake up to a different life. The proud moon of their tumultuous night had disappeared beyond the mountains and gave way for daybreak. When the curtains of his heavy eyelids finally fell, Gladstone was there smiling against a backdrop of emptiness, his open hand extended in mockery and invitation. 

He didn’t reach for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Uuuuu I SAID I'M SORRY. But despite my disatisfaction...I do hope you enjoyed it. Wow. 13k dngl! Thank you all for reading <3 ]


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